ST. LOUIS — The St. Louis Cardinals were huddled in their clubhouse late Friday night, protective goggles on their faces, sheets of plastic on their lockers, champagne bottles in their hands. The National League pennant was won, the proper hats and T-shirts were donned, but the celebration was on hold for one reason: Carlos Beltran wasn’t there yet.

Only when the veteran outfielder finished his last on-field interview, walked through the clubhouse door and said a few words — “Let’s do this!” he concluded — did the Cardinals fill the air with champagne spray and noise.

As much as each member of the Cardinals wanted to reach the World Series for his own sake, the quest to get Beltran there, in his 16th season in the majors, became a shared mission for the entire organization.

“Obviously, [Beltran] is a Hall of Fame talent, but he [is] a better friend and teammate and an exceptional leader,” third baseman David Freese said. “He deserves this more than anybody.”

Beltran, 36, did as much as anyone on the Cardinals’ roster — with the possible exception of rookie pitcher Michael Wacha, who beat Los Angeles Dodgers ace Clayton Kershaw twice in the NL Championship Series and earned most valuable player honors — to make the moment possible. He had four of the Cardinals’ 12 RBI in the series, drew five of their 14 walks and made some of their biggest defensive plays.

He is, by some measures, the preeminent postseason performer of his generation, as evidenced by his .327 batting average, .443 on-base percentage and .717 slugging percentage in 44 career postseason games. But until Friday night, when the Cardinals clinched the NLCS with a 9-0 win over the Dodgers in Game 6, Beltran’s postseason career had been largely defined by disappointments, all of them with the Cardinals playing a role.

In 2004, as a member of the Houston Astros, he dominated the postseason like few others had done in history — hitting eight home runs in 12 games — but the Astros fell to the Cardinals in a seven-game NLCS, falling one win shy of the World Series.

Two years later, with the Mets, Beltran had another strong postseason, but his team fell to the Cardinals again in a seven-game NLCS, with Beltran himself taking a curveball for a called strike three against then-Cardinals closer Adam Wainwright to end it.

Finally, last year, as a member of the Cardinals, Beltran hit .444/.542/.944 in the NL Division Series vs. the Washington Nationals and .300/.364/.600 in the NLCS, but the Cardinals lost — yet again in the decisive seventh game — to the San Francisco Giants.

In all, he played in seven games with a chance to go to the World Series, and his teams went 0-7.

“It wasn’t meant to be. It wasn’t meant to happen,” Beltran said Friday night, looking back on those just-misses. “Being able to get so close and never being able to get to the World Series, it gave me motivation every year to . . . prepare myself and try to get there.”

In the wee hours Friday morning, Beltran’s wife, Jessica, awoke to find her husband standing next to their bed, practicing his swing with an imaginary bat. “I was thinking about the game,” he recalled after Game 6, “about the things I needed to do when I get to the ballpark. All the positives you put into your brain, it can come through” in the game.

It was Beltran who got the first lick in on Kershaw, roping a double in the first inning — his 30th extra-base hit in the postseason, behind only Albert Pujols and Chipper Jones in NL history — that signaled to his teammates that the great lefty might just be hittable on this night. Beltran wound up collecting two more singles as the Cardinals chased Kershaw from the game in the fifth inning and also made an excellent running, falling catch of a line drive in the fifth.

“He deserves it,” catcher Yadier Molina said of Beltran. “We did it just for him.”

All month, Beltran has sensed how badly his teammates wanted to win for him, to get him to the World Series at last. He had played in 2,064 regular season games — only Miguel Tejada and Torii Hunter, among active players, had played in more without making it to the World Series — and now, finally, it had happened.

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